What is Inbound Marketing?

What is Inbound Marketing?

4 Essential Components of the Inbound methodology

You have probably heard of inbound marketing, but you may not be familiar with how it differs from traditional online marketing.

We often get the question: “What is inbound marketing?” In short, inbound marketing is the marketing methodology for the digital age.

Since a decade inbound marketing has been the most effective marketing method for online marketing, lead generation and reducing conversion time. Inbound marketing takes your digital strategy to the next level of lead generation and customer engagement.

Unlike the outbound marketing methods with buying advertisements, buying email lists and hoping for leads (probably less than qualified leads), inbound marketing focuses on creating high-quality content that attracts people to your products and services while delivering relevant content. By aligning the content that you publish with the interests of your target customer in mind, you attract visitors to your website that you can then convert, close and delight over time.

By creating content that is specifically made to appeal to your ideal customers, your inbound marketing attracts qualified prospects and ensures that they come back. The best thing about inbound marketing is that it is not a paid form of advertising. What is the advantage of this? The content lives on your site (thus online) for as long as you want. The difference between this form and paid is that when you stop paying for ads with Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords), Facebook ads, etc., your leads and website traffic will also stop. That is not the case with inbound marketing.

There are 4 marketing components that are crucial when you talk about inbound marketing: Attract, Convert, Close & Delight.

Below we explain all this in more detail.

Attract: Attracting customers is the first step in the methodology for inbound marketing. In this first marketing phase, the customer receives the right content, in the right place and at the right time through search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing.

Converteren: once the right visitors are attracted to the website, the goal is to turn them into leads by getting their contact details on a landing page. To receive this valuable information, they are offered premium content that they are looking for. This helps them to gain the information they are looking for and offers you their contact details to serve them further.

Closing: leads are converted into customers in the closing phase. In this marketing phase specific marketing tools are used, such as marketing automation, lead nurturing and social media monitoring to ensure that the perfect leads are closed at the right time.

Delight: Inbound marketing is all about offering premium content to both your leads and your customers. This means that even after a lead is closed, it still needs to be served through dynamic content, social media, and trigger marketing. The purpose of serving the customers is to be able to solve their problems as well as to convert these customers into promoters of your company.

The Inbound method involves the marketer in every phase of the process that a customer goes through during the search for the perfect product or service, by luring the right visitors to your website and converting them into qualified leads, selling more and your customers to surprise.

The great thing about this method is that you are in charge of the results. These successful results are achieved through inbound marketing channels and tactics with which you can create and deliver specific and valuable content and marketing for your leads and customers at the right time.

Want to read more about each of the phase of inbound marketing and in more detail, including tips to maximize each phase of the inbound marketing process? Then click on one of the links below.